This time of year, the Blackhawks are typically California dreamin’. On or around Thanksgiving, the Hawks traditionally make their way to Los Angeles as the final part of their two-week circus trip. But this is the first year in a long time the Hawks have no circus trip.

If the Hawks are going through beach withdrawal, at least they will have the sands of Fort Lauderdale to comfort them for the next few nights as they prepare to take on the Panthers after falling 3-2 in overtime to the Lightning on Wednesday.

When the schedule came out in June, many of the Hawks were excited not to have a two-week slog through western Canada and the West Coast of the U.S. But as they go through their current schedule, some of the veterans said they actually miss it.

Captain Jonathan Toews said it seems like the Hawks are doing more traveling back and forth to Chicago this season instead of getting six or seven games out of the way on one trip, and it might actually hurt the team in the long run.

“Later on in the season when we start adding up all these single-game road trips, I think that’s when we’ll realize that some of those longer road trips where we get a bunch of games and spend a lot of time together on the road — we always appreciated that,” Toews said. “(The circus trip) took away a lot of days you’re traveling instead of going to and from Chicago all the time. It’s a lot different this year. I prefer it the way it was before.”

Toews and Patrick Kane said the circus trip was a great opportunity for the Hawks to bond as a team. Often, if the Hawks had a few days off after going through Western Canada, they would stop in Las Vegas and take some, ahem, time to relax.

“You spend a lot of time with the guys,” Kane said. “It’s early on in the season and you’ve got a new team and everyone is still probably trying to get to know each other a little bit.”

Kane said at first he was glad not to have the circus trip on the schedule. Now, like Toews, he wishes it was there.

“It was kind of nice knowing that there wasn’t going to be a circus trip this year, but now it seems like we have a lot more travel this year,” Kane said. “If you think about it, it would’ve been nice to have an almost two-week trip. You get a lot of road games out of the way.”

Kane said it was nice to be in Chicago for his birthday, which came Sunday, and the Hawks still had time Thursday to unwind and watch football while the American players celebrate Thanksgiving. As it pertains to hockey, Kane said the Hawks had some successful circus trips in their recent past.

“On a lot of those trips, it seems like where we really took off as team,” Kane said. “We had some really good trips there, a couple undefeated trips, a couple one-loss trips. You have those trips and all of a sudden you’re ahead of the pack and you’ve got a lot of home games left.”

To paraphrase Joni Mitchell, the Hawks didn’t know what they had until it was gone.